Guild Wars 2

is lightning storm really worth the slot?
it has a huge kitten cooldown and vuln is halved on bosses

the reason i asked this is because a few days ago i joined a zerk speedrun with meta builds requirement. another ele saw me use signet of fire and said “meta builds do not use signet of fire” and left the group. is it such a huge loss to use signet of fire over lightning storm? staff user btw

8% crit chance for yourself or +% damage for yourself and 4 others in your party.

I don’t dungeon or ele so I just place that question for you to ask self.

If someone left the party because you use Signet of Fire, that’s a classic wannabe speed runner.

Signet of Fire vs Glyph of Storm? It depend on the situation. Overall Signet of Fire will be a better choice since most good team composition will be able to get 25 stack of vulnerability wihtout the Glyph.

But a team that want to burst down boss want 25 stack of vulnerability at the start of the fight, but after the Icebow burst is done. That’s the main strength of glyph of storm. But in a normal team, only 1 glyph is needed. Still there is some specific situation. For exemple, if your team have a ranger, then Glyph of Stom isn’t really needed since Ranger + Warrior will be able to get the boss to 25 vulnerability from the start. But if you get your might from a PS Warrior, then you want your warrior in GS at the start of the fight, not in Axe/Mace so then you want 1 glyph of storm (2 glyph of storm if you don’t have a ranger either).

It really depend on the team composition and what build everybody use. Neither Glyph nor Signet of fire will be the best choice in all situation and someone raging because you took one over the other definitively have some ego issue.

Even in a group that already maxes vuln, glyph of storms brings more. It does more damage and it can be used defensively to protect you from trash mobs with sandstorm. Its not as much AOE burst as an icestorm or meteor shower. But its still pretty significant damage.

Signet of fire is old meta. Noone uses it anymore. There are a few situations it might be worth it. But generally your bar should always be icebow, glyph of storms and arcane wave. And if you are playing LH (dunno why you would since phalanx + staff ele meta) it would be icebow, glyph of storms and LH.

The difference in dps isn’t that big. Glyph of storm is a bigger burst, but Signet of Fire will bring more overall damage (if you exclude the vulnerability). In a good group that focus on burst and skip, then yes Glyph of Storm will always be better. But when pugging, they are fairly equal, even in situation where glyph of storm is better the difference is small.

Personally, I only use signet of fire when I’m in relatively bad pugs. But leaving a pug because someone use signet of fire over the glyph, I found that a bit excessive and ridiculous.

Phalanx doesn’t work against the Nightmare tree. I always drop LH so that the warrior can blind the tree.

25% more damage (i.e. full stack of vuln) for your Ice Storm and Meteor Shower is a huge DPS increase. Signet of Fire was significant during the FGS meta because you can build up the Vuln quickly with Rush. After the buff of Glyph of Storm, there is no doubt that Glyph of Storm is a better choice than Signet of Fire.

The only time I would prefer Signet of Fire is playing Fresh Air with insufficient source of crit chance.

Tree dies so fast you dont need to worry about phalanx warrior. Pre stack might lasts enough. Besides you can take LH instead of wave while on staff eles for the nightmare tree. If you cast LH 4 at the end its pretty big burst aswell. Although some groups kill the tree before you can finish your icebow + meteor shower.

I was more referring to taking a LH build. There is no reason for that anymore. But there are certainly still reasons to slot LH.

While we’re talking about nightmare tree, what I normally do is swap to 62222 and take lightning hammer/glyph of storms/ice bow. I just use #4 on LH and drop it.

The tree dies so fast either way that it hardly matters, just saves a few seconds is all. If you forget to do it then it’s not that big of a deal.

As for signet of fire… yeah OP the person who ragequit the group clearly over-exaggerated but generally speaking it’s worse to take it over glyph of storms most of the time because of the reasons spoj posted above. Glyph of storms is very strong and very useful.